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WEDDLE’s Announces 2008 User’s Choice Winners

Job boards have changed recruitment forever. They have made more talent available to more employers than any other medium in history. Are they the only tool a recruiter should use to source new hires? Of course not. The War for the Best Talent is too demanding a challenge-even in a down economy-to be waged with a single resource, no matter how powerful it may be. That said, the organizations that ignore job boards or use them ineffectively will find themselves engaged in a very different kind of battle-one best described as a War for Mediocre Talent.

Given this critical role, it’s important to remember that job boards are barely more than ten years old. A decade ago, there was a Monster Board, the Online Career Center, CareerMosaic.com and a handful of smaller sites. That’s it. Today, there are more than 50,000 job boards operating in the U.S. alone and an equal number offering their services elsewhere around the world. Which begs the question, “How can you determine which sites will best serve you and your organization?”.

That’s what WEDDLE’s User’s Choice Awards are all about. They celebrate the elite of the job board industry. More importantly, they are the only recognition in that industry in which actual users-job seekers, recruiters and employers-get to select the winners. No pundit picks here, just the opinions of people who have relied on these sites to hire the talent their organizations need or find the employment opportunities they seek.

Since 2005, we at WEDDLE’s have been holding a year-long poll where job board users can come and cast their vote for their favorite sites. At the end of each year, we tally up the ballots and recognize the thirty sites with the most votes as our User’s Choice Award winners-the elite of the job board industry. (To cast your vote, please click here.)

Are there other great job boards out there? Absolutely. The winners, however, have generated enough enthusiasm among their users that those individuals are willing to take the time out of their busy day to visit the WEDDLE’s site and cast a ballot for them. As with the voting for Major League Baseball’s All Star teams, it’s not a scientific process, but it is definitely a measure of the intensity of support that sites have been able to generate among their users.

Shopping for the right job board-the one with the best talent for each and every opening an organization seeks to fill-is now a core competency of recruitment, and WEDDLE’s User’s Choice Awards give you a one-of-a-kind filter with which to evaluate alternative sites. We may live in an era of hyperbole, but it is no exaggeration to say that the User’s Choice Award winners are among the very best job boards in the world. That’s not my opinion. It’s the view of tens of thousands of recruiters (and job seekers) worldwide.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

P.S. Please tell your friends and colleagues about the WEDDLE’s newsletter. As you know, we don’t follow the herd or the latest fad here. Instead, we deliver sound research, reliable information and savvy analysis. For free. And right to your e-mailbox. So please … share the experience.

P.S.S. Don’t forget to send us your new e-mail address if you move. Lots of people are changing jobs these days, and we want to be sure you still have the information in WEDDLE’s to help you perform at your peak. All you have to do to keep your WEDDLE’s newsletter coming is send your change of address to pwj@weddles.com.

This Issue’s Sponsor: WEDDLE’s Private Training

This issue of WEDDLE’s newsletter is brought to you through the generous support of WEDDLE’s Private Training Programs, with tailored courses for direct employers and for staffing firms.

WEDDLE’s offers a wide range of training programs that can be delivered on-site in your own facility or in a toll-free audio format similar to WEDDLE’s public programs. You can select a single 75-minute program, pick two programs for a combined 2.5-hour seminar or three programs for a half-day workshop. All programs are delivered by WEDDLE’s Publisher, Peter Weddle.

WEDDLE’s training programs include:

Precruitment-Planning for Recruiting Excellence

Transforming Supervisors into CROs-Chief Retention Officers

Blink Recruiting-Getting to “Yes” Fast With Passive Prospects

Optimizing the Candidate Experience: The Secret to Recruiting Top Talent

A-to-Z in Best Practices for Online Recruitment Advertising

Best Practices in Sourcing Passive Prospects Online

Building a Corporate Career Site for Top Talent

The Sum & Substance of a Great Employment Brand

Transforming Your Resume Database into a Candidate Gold Mine

HR Leadership-The Antidote to Management-by-the-Numbers

Staffing Metrics That Count in the Corner Office

For more information and to schedule your private, in-house WEDDLE’s training program, please call us at 203.964.1888.

Section Two: Site News You Can Use

Blessing-White, a global consulting firm based in New Jersey, conducted a survey of managers and executives to determine their view of corporate career development programs. While the issue is clearly important to these business leaders, it is also central to an organization’s ability to attract and retain top performers at the staff level, as well. How did employers fare? Among the almost 1,000 respondents worldwide, just 29% thought their employer’s programs for career development met their needs. With the demise of the gold watch and the career ladder, talented workers must now deal with more unknowns and more complicated issues if they want to be in charge of their career rather than its victim. For most organizations, that reality forces a choice. Career development expertise is often not a core competency of the HR Department, so firms can either choose to acquire (and then maintain) that capability themselves or they can support the acquisition of the knowledge and skill set for career self-management by individual employees. However it’s provided, the expertise must enable individuals to understand what drives their best performance at work, how to set appropriate and meaningful short and longer term goals, and what steps to take on what schedule in order to accomplish those objectives. (If you’d like to know more about WEDDLE’s Career Fitness program for individual career self-management, please contact Peter Weddle at 203.964.1888.)

I suppose it was inevitable given the culture of the Web, but I admit we were surprised to see the advent of a new employment resource called ISrchNkd.com. This San Diego-based search engine has been in operation for while, but has only recently added job postings to its site. As the founder of the company explains, “A lot of people surf and search for things on the Internet, and they do it in their underwear, pajamas and even naked. So if you are searching for a job, then do it naked.” Now, that’s what I call focusing on natural search results! Anyway, if you want to tap into this special cohort of the population, you can post your ads and link them to specific keywords and keyword phrases for a fixed monthly fee.

The Journal for Quality and Participation published an article by Rick Maurer which identified the twelve steps required to build internal support for change. What does that have to do with recruiters? According to the 2008 HR Trend Book from SHRM, “The one constant in human resource management is change.” And in a slowing economy, the top performing recruitment functions will adapt as necessary to reflect the twin realities of a slowing pace of recruitment and an increased reluctance among the best talent to make a change. To ensure your organization doesn’t get overwhelmed by shifting circumstances, we’ve listed the first five steps in Mr. Mauer’s list with some clarifying additions from us:

Identify the stakeholders and determine what you need as well as what support you are likely to get [from them];

Make a [business] case for change;

Determine [coalition-building] strategies that will help you continue to make the case for change [throughout the organization and] throughout the life of the project;

[Position the change as a corporate initiative and then] determine who will lead and who will take part in planning the change; and

Look for potential resistance [and determine how you can best counteract it].

Section Three: Site Profiles

Site Spotlite … from the pages of WEDDLE’s 2007/8 Guides and Directories

There are 50,000 job boards now in operation in North America and an equal number operating elsewhere around the world. The key to recruiting top talent online, therefore, is knowing where to find and how to select the best sites for each of your requirements. WEDDLE’s 2007/8 Guide identifies 350 of the top sites worldwide and provides the information you need to determine which job boards will deliver the optimum yield for you. For example:

Please Support Our Sponsor: WEDDLE’s Training

This issue of WEDDLE’s newsletter is brought to you through the generous support of WEDDLE’s Private Training Programs, with tailored courses for direct employers and for staffing firms.

WEDDLE’s offers a wide range of training programs that can be delivered on-site in your own facility or in a toll-free audio format similar to WEDDLE’s public programs. You can select a single 75-minute program, pick two programs for a combined 2.5-hour seminar or three programs for a half-day workshop. All programs are delivered by WEDDLE’s Publisher, Peter Weddle.

WEDDLE’s training programs include:

Precruitment-Planning for Recruiting Excellence

Transforming Supervisors into CROs-Chief Retention Officers

Blink Recruiting-Getting to “Yes” Fast With Passive Prospects

Optimizing the Candidate Experience: The Secret to Recruiting Top Talent

A-to-Z in Best Practices for Online Recruitment Advertising

Best Practices in Sourcing Passive Prospects Online

Building a Corporate Career Site for Top Talent

The Sum & Substance of a Great Employment Brand

Transforming Your Resume Database into a Candidate Gold Mine

HR Leadership-The Antidote to Management-by-the-Numbers

Staffing Metrics That Count in the Corner Office

For more information and to schedule your private, in-house WEDDLE’s training program, please call us at 203.964.1888.